Ok, heads up – skip this post if you don’t want to see any spoilers for Zwift’s new Titans Grove route.
Still here?
Good. Today Zwift launched another expansion to Watopia – Titans Grove.
There are a number of new routes that take you through Titans Grove, both forwards and reverse, and there are new KOM’s to hit in both directions. I opted for Sand and Sequoias, which aside from being a tricky one to spell, is the shortest route to hit Titans Grove, as far as I am aware.
The Dino cafe was a really cool addition in the previous Watopia expansion – Fuego Flats.
Whilst it served as a nice land mark on the flat desert route, the Zwift devs must have had a little more in mind with this at the time of creation. More on this shortly.
For this ride I’d opted to continue on with Zwift’s 12 week FTP Builder training routine. Week 5 day 3 was my ride of the day, and this was amongst the most tedious / boring workouts I’ve done on Zwift to date.
Knowing the ride would be boring, I’d chosen the new Sand and Sequoias route to try to make the exercise as interesting as possible.
It took until almost all the way through the second 9 minute effort to reach Titans Grove turn off. Let me tell you, 9 minutes at 125w is a total pain in the arse. And I mean that very literally.
Fortunately, even though the workout itself was very tedious, once I hit Titans Grove the visuals were enough to keep me interested. In truth I almost certainly would have alt+tabbed for this ride and watched YouTube videos instead. But with a new route, I kept in Zwift throughout.
The forward entrance into Titans Grove is up and down, always bending and turning. The reverse route seems a little steeper, but forwards we only hit on a maximum gradient of 5% as best I recall. That said, it’s (almost?) never flat. A far cry from Fuego Flats which we just came from.
And then dinosaurs.
Easily the coolest part of Titans Grove for me was the dinosaurs roaming about in the lakes. There are various dinos to be seen, and it all ties in so nicely with Fuego Flats. The whole Zwift crew need massive plaudits for this. The route visuals are amazing.
Once you see the first dino you should know that the KOM start line looms close. I don’t think this is marked on the map, which is something unusual for Zwift as best I recall.
This KOM is long. I’m not quite sure how long, but it’s fairly long.
The strange thing is, it’s marked in green. KOM’s are usually marked in red.
I’m not sure if this is a bug. But I thought it was a sprint marker, and not the KOM marker. This wasn’t helped by me being in workout mode, so I couldn’t actually see the leaderboard.
There are various dinosaurs to be seen along the climb. Very cool. I won’t spoil everything for you, but keep your eyes out for some cool visuals.
Up and up I went, at a very slow pace. The route was busy, but not overly so. I had the fortune of being able to ride early on a Friday afternoon, so most regular people will still have been at work. As will I, from Monday :/
I’d really have liked to give this one a solid effort. Climbing at 125w was quite… frustrating. But again, the visuals helped me on this run at least.
I was pondering where I’d rank this route on the scale of all that Zwift has to offer. It’s better (imo) than Fuego Flats, and about as cool as the Alpe Du Zwift in terms of detail. With that in mind I’d say it’s easily in the top 3 routes on Zwift right now.
The top of the KOM is barely marked. Hard to see especially when in workout mode.
The descent was fun.
Again, “locked” at 125w I got to see pretty much everything as it crawled past me at a snails pace.
The reverse KOM looks steeper, as Zwift routes typically are. There were a fair few people climbing the reverse route, but no where near as many as the forward route. Again, very typical.
Coming down there are plenty of things to see. It’s cool to look off in the distance and see various landmarks. One thing I remember is seeing the castle on the hill from the Epic KOM climb. I don’t recall ever being able to see this on any other route, so that was nice.
The descent down takes you through a bunch of interesting visuals – there are a few easter eggs to spot. I’m not sure I spotted them all, but I saw a few. Again, I won’t spoil them for you.
The various chalets were a nice touch. Kept things interesting and varied. I was trying my best to grab screenshots where I could.
From the gradients on the descent it’s easier to see that the reverse climb is harder than the forward KOM run. The reverse KOM starts much later, too. Save those legs.
My favourite part of the descent was the geyser pools. This part was really awesome. Great job.
The one thing I didn’t get to see, and maybe it does or does not happen was a geyser eruption. I hope it does.
Again, some easter eggs in this section. Keep your eyes peeled.
And then finally I was done.
Along the way I hit my weekly 3 hour riding goal.
I’m not sure what’s happened but Zwift appears to have lost one of my workouts this week. It still thought I was at ~50km for the week, when I should be closer to to ~75km. Typical Zwift. Still buggy.
Overall this was a fun ride but a boring workout.
5 repeated blocks of 9 minutes at 125w… good grief.
I’m looking forward to attacking this route in free ride mode, that’s for sure.
I haven’t looked at what’s next on the Zwift workout schedule for the FTP builder. Hopefully something a little more interesting.
Even though this was a low intensity workout I was glad to see over 400 calories burned, and I must say, I sweated enough throughout.
I’ve made up for this later in the day with plenty of beers and wine, however :/
In short: get on this route this weekend. It’s really good.
